Words: twentiethly, adv.

TWENTIETHLY IS, if we are to put total faith in the OED, not a word at all. Firstly, secondly, thirdly and all the ordinal adverbs up to nineteenthly are listed, but there they stop. How splendid it is to think that, on at least one occasion, someone managed to get up to nineteenthly.

I can imagine the scene now: a speaker uttering a list of unparalleled tedium, sending his audience into a stupor of boredom until his ascent climbed within reach of the elusive twentiethly. Could he make it? Would he set a new record for ordinal adverbosity? Sadly it was not to be. At nineteethly, he faltered and fell at the last fence.

It was probably not like that at all. More likely it was a golfer: "We'll play 18 holes, then nineteenthly go for a drink." And twentiethly, go home. Done it!